When ignited, tobacco products such as cigars and cigarettes produce an unused remnant or butt, which a smoker must dispose of. In recent years, there has been significant public opposition to smoking in general, which has led to prohibition of smoking in such places as restaurants, nightclubs, hotels, airlines, and the workplace. This ban on smoking has resulted in the removal of many waste receptacles for tobacco remnants. In many places, smokers are now forced to go outside to smoke and sometimes are limited to only specific outdoor locations away from buildings. Moreover, many public places do not provide ashtrays or other receptacles for tobacco product remnants for the express purpose of dissuading persons from smoking. Additionally, many automakers no longer build cars having ashtrays to dissuade smoking while driving. Thus, smokers in automobiles will often dispose of their spent cigarette remnants by throwing them out of the automobile onto the roadside. Even in vehicles with ashtrays, many smokers prefer to litter the roadside rather than placing the cigarette butts into the ashtray for later removal. Such action is certainly deleterious to the environment with regard to litter and fire potential. It is in response to the foregoing problems that the present invention is primarily directed to address.
Because of this opposition to smoking, conscientious smokers will often take along containers to collect the tobacco product ashes and remnants when they go to the outdoor areas to smoke. Such containers are also especially useful within vehicles which do not have ashtrays. The containers are generally simple ashtrays or cups (or even empty soda cans), used solely to collect tobacco product remnants, and which, among other problems, do not prevent the smoke and odors from the spent smoking materials from dissipating into the environment, and/or do not conceal the unsightly spent smoking materials, and/or cannot be easily emptied, and/or are not reusable. The previously known containers, however, all suffer from certain drawbacks, such as the failure of the device to provide a quick extinguishing mechanism to prevent the cigarette butt from smoldering for an excessive period of time, the failure to capture smoke emitted from the cigarette butt, and the failure to capture or conceal odors produced by the cigarette butt.
Thus what is needed is a portable device capable of extinguishing and collecting a cigarette butt while reducing or eliminating odor.